Tendring Topics………on Line
‘Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?’ (John 20.15)
Easter was a very special occasion this year as, unusually, the Easter of the Eastern Orthodox Churches coincided with that of the Catholic and Reformed Churches of the West. Thus every Christian Church in the world remembered the cruel death of Jesus Christ – and celebrated his glorious rising from the dead, on the same weekend.
The picture, taken in St. James’ Church Clacton on Easter morning, depicts the empty tomb and the weeping Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ. It is decorated with Easter flowers and flanked by two votive candles
The turning world meant that throughout Easter there was never a moment when, in churches, chapels and cathedrals, somewhere or other in the world, Christ’s resurrection and its promise of eternal life were not being remembered and celebrated. ‘The voice of prayer is never silent, nor dies the song of praise away’.
Making a (small) profit from one’s convictions!
Did you realize that on 6th April (probably the day on which I shall post this blog) postal charges will be increased? There never seems to be much publicity of these regular upward changes and it is very easy to be caught out. The price of sending a ‘normal size’ letter under 100g by first-class post goes up from 39 to 41p and by second-class post from 30 to 32p. Large letters (that includes some large greetings cards) go up from 61p to 66p first-class and from 47 to 51p second-class.
‘Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?’ (John 20.15)
Easter was a very special occasion this year as, unusually, the Easter of the Eastern Orthodox Churches coincided with that of the Catholic and Reformed Churches of the West. Thus every Christian Church in the world remembered the cruel death of Jesus Christ – and celebrated his glorious rising from the dead, on the same weekend.
The picture, taken in St. James’ Church Clacton on Easter morning, depicts the empty tomb and the weeping Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ. It is decorated with Easter flowers and flanked by two votive candles
The turning world meant that throughout Easter there was never a moment when, in churches, chapels and cathedrals, somewhere or other in the world, Christ’s resurrection and its promise of eternal life were not being remembered and celebrated. ‘The voice of prayer is never silent, nor dies the song of praise away’.
Making a (small) profit from one’s convictions!
Did you realize that on 6th April (probably the day on which I shall post this blog) postal charges will be increased? There never seems to be much publicity of these regular upward changes and it is very easy to be caught out. The price of sending a ‘normal size’ letter under 100g by first-class post goes up from 39 to 41p and by second-class post from 30 to 32p. Large letters (that includes some large greetings cards) go up from 61p to 66p first-class and from 47 to 51p second-class.
The cost of mail sent abroad goes up correspondingly. Airmail letters under 10g to anywhere in Europe rise from 56p to 60p and to the rest of the world from 62p to 67p. Full details are set out clearly in a leaflet ‘pricing made easy’ obtainable from any post office.
The price of postage stamps designated simply ‘First Class’ and ‘Second Class’ is, as the economists say, ‘buoyant’. As postal charges increase, so do their values. A ‘First Class’ stamp purchased five years or longer ago is valid today, even though today’s first class postal charge will be a great deal higher than it was when the stamp was bought.
For the past two years I have suggested at Christmas time that buying sufficient 1st Class and 2nd Class ‘religious’ Christmas stamps for use on correspondence throughout the year, is an effective and non-aggressive way of affirming our Christian faith. I do it myself. It was made easier last year by the fact that, since all the special Christmas stamps were reproductions of church stained-glass windows, they could all have been considered to be ‘religious’.
Purchasing a supply of those first and second-class stamps was also a profitable thing to do! Those who have followed my suggestion will have made a worthwhile investment! Those stamps have gone up in value by 2 pence each. I have always been a long way short of brilliant at mathematics, but I think that that means a tax-free increase in value of about six percent in the four months since their purchase. These days it would be difficult to find another investment yielding a similar short-term profit!
Expensive Executives
A few months ago I commented on a report that Tendring Council’s three most highly paid officials were facing redundancy. Although this has still not been officially confirmed, there now seems little doubt that the report was correct.
The Daily Gazette is chiefly concerned about the size of the ‘golden handshakes’ that they will receive on their departure - £200,000 between them – but it seems to me that there are other, more important, issues involved. As a former (quite lowly paid!) council official, I am astonished at the three posts that are, so we learn, the highest paid on the Council’s staff.
There’s no surprise about the Chief Executive. His reported salary of ‘over £120,000 a year’ may seem enormous to most of us but it’s little more than petty cash to the Chief Executive of Essex County Council, whose income is reported by the Taxpayers’ Alliance as being about £200,000 – more than that of the Prime Minister! But then the County Council has loads of our money to spend, and they don’t even have to go to the trouble of collecting it. That’s Tendring Council’s job.
Clacton’s Town Hall. Nerve centre of Tendring
District Council
The second most highly paid post is that of Deputy Chief Executive. Now that does seem astonishing to me bearing in mind that the Council also employs experienced professional men and women – solicitors, financial experts, engineers, surveyors, architects, environmental health experts. Surely one or two of them must be both better qualified and of greater importance to the Council than a deputy – even of someone as important as a Chief Executive. That’s strange enough, but the third man is not the Chief, nor the Deputy but the Assistant Chief Executive. He and the Deputy are both said to have salaries of over £100,000 a year.
The other matter that perplexes me is the reason for their departure. Councillor Neil Stock, the Council’s Leader, attempts to brush it off as a fairly routine matter. He is reported as saying, ‘The report is all about succession planning. When you have three senior officers nearing retirement age, you need to manage their exit. That is why this report was drawn up’.
Really? If they’re ‘nearing retirement age’ why not plan their replacement and wait till they retire before worrying about how much they are then to be paid? There will be no need for ‘negotiations’. Their ‘lump sum retirement payment’ and annual pension is laid down by national agreement. The picture of Chief Executive John Hawkins, Chief Executive, in the Gazette doesn’t suggest to me that he’ll be drawing his state pension and getting his bus pass and free tv licence in the very near future. But perhaps he’s older than he looks.
It can hardly be said that the three of them have been incompetent or disappointing in their performance in office. They were steering Tendring Council’s course during the year that the Government’s Audit Commission declared it to be the best performing Council in Essex and in the top flight of well performing Councils in England.
Could it be that that is why they have now lost favour? Were they too closely associated with the recent Tendring First administration and therefore the present rulers of Tendring (with their majority of one) wish to replace them with a person or persons more sympathetic to their philosophy?
It will be a sad day for local government when councils are not prepared to accept that their professional officers will give of their very best to their employing authority, whatever its political orientation may be. It will be an even sadder day when professional officers give them reason to believe that such doubts are justified.
‘Not from my bank account!’
Everybody knows that our country is in a financial mess. Everyone agrees that it is a mess from which we can escape only by cutting government services and/or increasing taxes. There is almost complete unanimity within the national press, the general public and politicians of all parties about this. Disagreement is about which services should suffer from the inevitable cuts, and who should bear the burden of the increased taxes. Sadly, most of us seem to think that the services on which we have come to depend should be sacrosanct and that we, and the group to which we happen to belong, should be exempt from increased taxation.
Pensioners have been among the first to complain about their ‘derisory’ pension increase this year and about the perceived threat to their winter fuel allowance. This is understandable because those pensioners who have no other source of income beyond the state pension manage to survive only with the help of the other benefits available to them.
Working people too, see their jobs and their incomes threatened. Many have had to choose between a pay cut and redundancy. Some have not had that option and have lost their jobs. Will job seekers allowances and other social security benefits be cut in the economy drive? I have no doubt that the strikes affecting rail and air travel, and threatening to spread to other fields, are less about existing pay and conditions of work than about the reorganisation, rationalisation and down-sizing that threatens all their jobs in the future.
The price of postage stamps designated simply ‘First Class’ and ‘Second Class’ is, as the economists say, ‘buoyant’. As postal charges increase, so do their values. A ‘First Class’ stamp purchased five years or longer ago is valid today, even though today’s first class postal charge will be a great deal higher than it was when the stamp was bought.
For the past two years I have suggested at Christmas time that buying sufficient 1st Class and 2nd Class ‘religious’ Christmas stamps for use on correspondence throughout the year, is an effective and non-aggressive way of affirming our Christian faith. I do it myself. It was made easier last year by the fact that, since all the special Christmas stamps were reproductions of church stained-glass windows, they could all have been considered to be ‘religious’.
Purchasing a supply of those first and second-class stamps was also a profitable thing to do! Those who have followed my suggestion will have made a worthwhile investment! Those stamps have gone up in value by 2 pence each. I have always been a long way short of brilliant at mathematics, but I think that that means a tax-free increase in value of about six percent in the four months since their purchase. These days it would be difficult to find another investment yielding a similar short-term profit!
Expensive Executives
A few months ago I commented on a report that Tendring Council’s three most highly paid officials were facing redundancy. Although this has still not been officially confirmed, there now seems little doubt that the report was correct.
The Daily Gazette is chiefly concerned about the size of the ‘golden handshakes’ that they will receive on their departure - £200,000 between them – but it seems to me that there are other, more important, issues involved. As a former (quite lowly paid!) council official, I am astonished at the three posts that are, so we learn, the highest paid on the Council’s staff.
There’s no surprise about the Chief Executive. His reported salary of ‘over £120,000 a year’ may seem enormous to most of us but it’s little more than petty cash to the Chief Executive of Essex County Council, whose income is reported by the Taxpayers’ Alliance as being about £200,000 – more than that of the Prime Minister! But then the County Council has loads of our money to spend, and they don’t even have to go to the trouble of collecting it. That’s Tendring Council’s job.
Clacton’s Town Hall. Nerve centre of Tendring
District Council
The second most highly paid post is that of Deputy Chief Executive. Now that does seem astonishing to me bearing in mind that the Council also employs experienced professional men and women – solicitors, financial experts, engineers, surveyors, architects, environmental health experts. Surely one or two of them must be both better qualified and of greater importance to the Council than a deputy – even of someone as important as a Chief Executive. That’s strange enough, but the third man is not the Chief, nor the Deputy but the Assistant Chief Executive. He and the Deputy are both said to have salaries of over £100,000 a year.
The other matter that perplexes me is the reason for their departure. Councillor Neil Stock, the Council’s Leader, attempts to brush it off as a fairly routine matter. He is reported as saying, ‘The report is all about succession planning. When you have three senior officers nearing retirement age, you need to manage their exit. That is why this report was drawn up’.
Really? If they’re ‘nearing retirement age’ why not plan their replacement and wait till they retire before worrying about how much they are then to be paid? There will be no need for ‘negotiations’. Their ‘lump sum retirement payment’ and annual pension is laid down by national agreement. The picture of Chief Executive John Hawkins, Chief Executive, in the Gazette doesn’t suggest to me that he’ll be drawing his state pension and getting his bus pass and free tv licence in the very near future. But perhaps he’s older than he looks.
It can hardly be said that the three of them have been incompetent or disappointing in their performance in office. They were steering Tendring Council’s course during the year that the Government’s Audit Commission declared it to be the best performing Council in Essex and in the top flight of well performing Councils in England.
Could it be that that is why they have now lost favour? Were they too closely associated with the recent Tendring First administration and therefore the present rulers of Tendring (with their majority of one) wish to replace them with a person or persons more sympathetic to their philosophy?
It will be a sad day for local government when councils are not prepared to accept that their professional officers will give of their very best to their employing authority, whatever its political orientation may be. It will be an even sadder day when professional officers give them reason to believe that such doubts are justified.
‘Not from my bank account!’
Everybody knows that our country is in a financial mess. Everyone agrees that it is a mess from which we can escape only by cutting government services and/or increasing taxes. There is almost complete unanimity within the national press, the general public and politicians of all parties about this. Disagreement is about which services should suffer from the inevitable cuts, and who should bear the burden of the increased taxes. Sadly, most of us seem to think that the services on which we have come to depend should be sacrosanct and that we, and the group to which we happen to belong, should be exempt from increased taxation.
Pensioners have been among the first to complain about their ‘derisory’ pension increase this year and about the perceived threat to their winter fuel allowance. This is understandable because those pensioners who have no other source of income beyond the state pension manage to survive only with the help of the other benefits available to them.
Working people too, see their jobs and their incomes threatened. Many have had to choose between a pay cut and redundancy. Some have not had that option and have lost their jobs. Will job seekers allowances and other social security benefits be cut in the economy drive? I have no doubt that the strikes affecting rail and air travel, and threatening to spread to other fields, are less about existing pay and conditions of work than about the reorganisation, rationalisation and down-sizing that threatens all their jobs in the future.
Increases in VAT affect disproportionately those on the lowest incomes. They increase prices, fuelling inflation and holding back recovery from recession.
There has been agreement between many employers and employees about halting the planned national insurance contributions increase. The money that would have been raised by this increase could be recouped by ‘efficiency savings’ says Mr David Cameron. I’ve heard that before from other political leaders, only though, when in opposition! In any event, isn’t the current crisis one that demands both efficiency savings and increased national insurance payments?
Then there are those, usually in the upper income brackets, who see the threat of rises in income tax rates as heralding a red revolution! I was amused to see the higher rate of income tax that is being introduced this year described in a popular newspaper as ‘a direct attack on middle England’. It will require those whose incomes exceed £150,000 a year to pay in income tax 50 percent of income above that sum. ‘Middle England’ indeed! I wonder how many readers of that newspaper have incomes even approaching that?
We are continually being told that if we try to tax the seriously wealthy proportionately to the rest of us, we’ll be driving the best brains and the wealth creators out of the country. Do they mean the scientists and engineers whose work keeps our industries competitive; perhaps the surgeons who save lives daily; perhaps even the top politicians and top public servants, whose decisions and competence affect us all?
Hardly! Few of those buy national football teams, have palatial villas on the shores of the Mediterranean or entertain influential politicians in their luxury yachts! Those who might be driven away are foreign expatriates who have made millions fleecing their fellow countrymen and have come to Britain to spend them, and our own home-grown successful gamblers and money-lenders. Isn’t gambling and money-lending what the stock market and the merchant banks (whose greed and incompetence triggered this crisis in the first place) are all about?
Disillusion with politicians, a yawning gap between the incomes of the richest and poorest in our society, a perception that the wealthy and privileged are escaping the worst effects of a financial situation that is impoverishing the rest of us; these are dangerous ingredients, possibly presaging a political fundamentalism even more deadly than the religious fundamentalism by which many feel threatened today.
There has been agreement between many employers and employees about halting the planned national insurance contributions increase. The money that would have been raised by this increase could be recouped by ‘efficiency savings’ says Mr David Cameron. I’ve heard that before from other political leaders, only though, when in opposition! In any event, isn’t the current crisis one that demands both efficiency savings and increased national insurance payments?
Then there are those, usually in the upper income brackets, who see the threat of rises in income tax rates as heralding a red revolution! I was amused to see the higher rate of income tax that is being introduced this year described in a popular newspaper as ‘a direct attack on middle England’. It will require those whose incomes exceed £150,000 a year to pay in income tax 50 percent of income above that sum. ‘Middle England’ indeed! I wonder how many readers of that newspaper have incomes even approaching that?
We are continually being told that if we try to tax the seriously wealthy proportionately to the rest of us, we’ll be driving the best brains and the wealth creators out of the country. Do they mean the scientists and engineers whose work keeps our industries competitive; perhaps the surgeons who save lives daily; perhaps even the top politicians and top public servants, whose decisions and competence affect us all?
Hardly! Few of those buy national football teams, have palatial villas on the shores of the Mediterranean or entertain influential politicians in their luxury yachts! Those who might be driven away are foreign expatriates who have made millions fleecing their fellow countrymen and have come to Britain to spend them, and our own home-grown successful gamblers and money-lenders. Isn’t gambling and money-lending what the stock market and the merchant banks (whose greed and incompetence triggered this crisis in the first place) are all about?
Disillusion with politicians, a yawning gap between the incomes of the richest and poorest in our society, a perception that the wealthy and privileged are escaping the worst effects of a financial situation that is impoverishing the rest of us; these are dangerous ingredients, possibly presaging a political fundamentalism even more deadly than the religious fundamentalism by which many feel threatened today.
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